The Distinctive Voice of Zora Neale Hurston
"It's thrilling to think- to know that for any act of mine, I shall get twice as much praise or twice as much blame"(Hurston 2). Zora Neale Hurston has a remarkably positive but realistic outlook on the duality of the African American female. She understands and therefore is aware that the African American female is greatly magnified in the blurred eyes of the white male world that distorts all of her achievements and shortcomings. Hurston was caught between the emphasis on the exotic aspects of the Harlem Renaissance and the angry voice of black literature during the 1940's and 1950's. During the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston decreased those injustices of race and sex. She challenged the traditional position of women and exceeded the traditional space they had been provided: She dared to see herself as a writer with talent equal to if not greater than her peers at representing the "folk" orally and in writing. Hurston rose above the challenge by becoming the most extraordinary writer of the group. Hurston's works deserve literary and scholarly attention because they acknowledge universal themes, view individuals at all levels of society, and represent the diversity and complexity of the African American female at the turn of the century. Hurston reveals themes in literature that are universal despite the fact that they often experienced divided fidelity to the culture that she lived. The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) has become a perennial classroom favorite because it does not focus on one class, but the entire community as a whole-representing its language, morals, and prejudices-as context. She went against the "nor...
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...rom the rural south who challenged racial, class, and sexual, assumptions in her writing, Hurston has become an
icon for many African American and women's studies scholars interested in authors promoting feminist and black national aesthetics. Her studies of literature and anthropology at Howard University and Barnard College provided her with a critical method for viewing individuals at all levels of society. It cannot be denied that Hurston's
works deserve literary and scholarly attention from all people because of the universal themes confronted, view of individuals at all levels of society, and the representation of diversity and complexity of the African American female at the turn of the century.
Works Cited
Story, Ralph. "Gender and Ambition: Zora Neale Hurston in the Harlem Renaissance"
1989 The Black Scholar. 28 May-July 1989
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Harper Perennial Modern Classics: Reissue Edition 2013
Zora Neale Hurston and Maya Angelou are arguably the most influential writers of the mid 20th century . Their work has inspired young African Americans to have more confidence in their own abilities. Their work has also been studied and taught countless times in many schools across the U.S. But the main reason why their work is considered classics in American literature; is because their work stands as testament to the treatment, and struggles of African Americans in the mid 20th century America.
Modern Critical Interpretations: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. Pondrom, Cyrena N. "
Zora Neale Hurston was, the daughter of a Baptist minister and an educated scholar who still believed in the genius contained within the common southern black vernacular(Hook http://splavc.spjc.cc.fl.us/hooks/Zora.html). She was a woman who found her place, though unstable, in a typical male profession. Hurston was born on January 7, 1891 in Eatonville, Florida, the first all-incorporated black town in America. She found a special thing in this town, where she said, "... [I] grew like a like a gourd and yelled bass like a gator," (Gale, 1). When Hurston was thirteen she was removed from school and sent to care for her brother's children. She became a member of a traveling theater at the age of sixteen, and then found herself working as a maid for a white woman. This woman saw a spark that was waiting for fuel, so she arranged for Hurston to attend high school in Baltimore. She also attended Morgan Academy, now called Morgan State University, from which she graduated in June of 1918. She then enrolled in the Howard Prep School followed by later enrollment in Howard University. In 1928 Hurston attended Barnard College where she studied anthropology under Franz Boas. After she graduated, Zora returned to Eatonville to begin work on anthropology. Four years after Hurston received her B.A. from Barnard she enrolled in Columbia University to begin graduate work (Discovering Authors, 2-4). Hurston's life seemed to be going well but she was soon to see the other side of reality.
Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is greatly praised by most critics today but was held in a different light when first published. Popular black authors during Hurston’s era held the most disdain for Hurston’s novel. Famous writer Richard Wright harshly criticized the book as a “minstrel technique that makes the ‘white folks’ laugh. Her characters eat and laugh and cry and work and kill; they swing like a pendulum eternally in that safe and narrow orbit in which America likes to see the Negro live: between laughter and tears” (Wright, Between Laughter and Tears). Wright dominated the 40’s decade of writing for blacks (Washington, Foreword). His review explains Hurston book is feeding the whites additional reasons why black are the “lower” race. This was the complete opposite idea of what blacks strived to be seen as and as such Hurston’s novel would be unread by the black culture. This made Wright’s review the most crippling towards Hurston because it was intensely harsh and his influence greatly urge the readers to dismiss Their Eyes Were Watching God leading to its disappearance.
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, social, and artistic eruption that took place in Harlem between the end of World War I and the middle of the 1930s. Throughout this period, Harlem was a cultural center, drawing black writers, poets, artists, musicians, scholars, and photographers. The Harlem Renaissance was a movement across every form of art, from literature to jazz to painting to drama. Regardless of the fact that Hurston wrote in a particular and geographical area, Hurston held political views that were utterly different from other Harlem Renaissance writers. Their Eyes Were Watching God focuses its plot both on Janie's series of romantic relationships as well as on Janie's individual journey for spiritual nourishment. In the novel, Janie's marriages force her to become aware of what it is that she wants for herself as an individual. This is an important part involving Zora´s writing because she as a person represents the Harlem Renaissance by the story she takes us
Despite the mindset that most of her peers keep about the inequality of race, she maintains an open mind and declares to the reader that she finds everyone equal. Thus proving herself as a person ahead of her own time. What I feel is truly remarkable about this author is that despite all the scrutiny and anguish that she faces like most of her race at the time she does not take a negative attitude towards white people and she actually chooses to ignore the general racial segregation. Her charming wit and sense of humor despite all the hardship is what attracts the reader. Hurston does not let her social disadvantages stop her from trying to achieve her aspirations and dreams.
Zora Neale Hurston’s “Sweat” is a distressing tale of human struggle as it relates to women. The story commences with a hardworking black washwoman named Delia contently and peacefully folds laundry in her quiet home. Her placidity doesn’t last long when her abusive husband, Sykes, emerges just in time to put her back in her ill-treated place. Delia has been taken by this abuse for some fifteen years. She has lived with relentless beatings, adultery, even six-foot long venomous snakes put in places she requires to get to. Her husband’s vindictive acts of torment and the way he has selfishly utilized her can only be defined as malignant. In the end of this leaves the hardworking woman no choice but to make the most arduous decision of her life. That is, to either stand up for herself and let her husband expire or to continue to serve as a victim. "Sweat,” reflects the plight of women during the 1920s through 30s, as the African American culture was undergoing a shift in domestic dynamics. In times of slavery, women generally led African American families and assumed the role as the adherent of the family, taking up domestic responsibilities. On the other hand, the males, slaves at the time, were emasculated by their obligations and treatment by white masters. Emancipation and Reconstruction brought change to these dynamics as African American men commenced working at paying jobs and women were abandoned at home. African American women were assimilated only on the most superficial of calibers into a subcategory of human existence defined by gender-predicated discrimination. (Chambliss) In accordance to this story, Delia was the bread victor fortifying herself and Sykes. Zora Neale Hurston’s 1926 “Sweat” demonstrates the vigor as wel...
But soon she is off, true to her free-minded self. It is interesting to note that Hurston does not dwell on the socio-economic situations (i.e., slavery, poverty) that bring about the two rapes, as another black author (perhaps Richard Wright?) might have done. Hurston instead focuses on Janie’s very real, very necessary search for self-fulfillment. This kind of focus was not common in Black literature at the time of the writing (early 1930’s), and Hurston drew much criticism for what was seen as a refusal to address the social, economic and political issues that preoccupied her contemporaries such as Wright and Ralph Ellison. However, it can be argued that what Hurston was attempting, a portrayal of a culturally “self-sufficient” black community, was just as necessary for a full realization of Black consciousness as was the “protest” literature of the Harlem Renaissance.
Racine, Maria J. "African American Review." Voice and Interiority in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God 28.2 (1994): 283-92. Jstor. Black's Women Culture Issue, Summer 1994. Web. Dec. 2013.
Bloom Harold. Modern Critical Views: Zora Neale Hurston. by Harold Bloom; Modern Critical Interpretations: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes were Watching God. Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 23, No. 4 (winter, 1989), pp. 799-807 St. Louis: St. Louis University, 1989. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2904103
Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God depicts the process of a woman's coming to consciousness, finding her voice and developing the power to tell her story. This fresh and much-needed perspective was met with incomprehension by the male literary establishment. In his review in New Masses, Richard Wright said the novel lacked "a basic idea or theme that lends itself to significant interpretation." Hurston's dialogue, he said, "manages to catch the psychological movements of the Negro folk mind in their pure simplicity, but that's as far as it goes. . . . . The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought." Many male reviewers and critics have reacted with similar hostility and incomprehension to The Color Purple. But to be blind to the definitions these and other women writers give to women's experience is to deny the validity of that experience.
This excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston’s book, Their Eyes Were watching God, is an example of her amazing writing. She makes us feel as if we are actually in her book, through her use of the Southern Black vernacular and admirable description. Her characters are realistic and she places special, well thought out sentences to keep us interested. Zora Neale Hurston’s art enables her to write this engaging story about a Southern black woman’s life.
...izes that there are still great differences between them and she sees them in a positive way. She feels while he only hears. Hurston handles the topic of race relations with no shame for herself or the African American community. She is proud of the differences. She feels life more fully.
Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston are similar to having the same concept about black women to have a voice. Both are political, controversial, and talented experiencing negative and positive reviews in their own communities. These two influential African-American female authors describe the southern hospitality roots. Hurston was an influential writer in the Harlem Renaissance, who died from mysterious death in the sixties. Walker who is an activist and author in the early seventies confronts sexually progression in the south through the Great Depression period (Howard 200). Their theories point out feminism of encountering survival through fiction stories. As a result, Walker embraced the values of Hurston’s work that allowed a larger